


Bitter

by kaibasetos (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck Coffee Shop AU, M/M, Rivalry / Mutual Hatred, Rude Boys Angrily Making Out, Very Mild Violence, as close to blackrom as humans can get anyway, this is basically just human blackrom tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2619257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kaibasetos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux really hates the new guy, but antagonizing him is just so damn gratifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter

**Author's Note:**

> This was literally just a garbage excuse to write gratuitous coffee shop AU and Sol using the term "princess" condescendingly, I'm sorry.

The new hire at work is a complete and utter douchebag, and Sollux dislikes him from day one.

To his credit, he pretty perfectly embodies the stereotype of the rich and entitled city dwellers who typically get brought on at their niche little coffee shop in the first place. He has this unwarranted sense of superiority that runs from the ridiculous royal violet streak in his ridiculous hair down to his expensive scarves and glittering gold rings. He’s constantly wearing crisp, designer black button-ups and dark, mysterious colognes from brands so high-end Sollux couldn’t name a single one if he tried. He speaks with this low, posh accent that sounds vaguely like ocean waves and totally put-on, but also like it might just be an old addition to his rude-boy exterior that’s become second nature by now. His face is a perpetual mixture of serious and apathetic, as though he’s thinking really hard about something but that something is never any of the people around him because they aren’t even worthy of appearing on his radar.

He’s pretty attractive, really, if you’re into that kind of thing. A lot of the customers are.

Sollux tells himself that he isn’t, and makes it his goal in life to irritate the absolute fuck out of this insufferable new arrival.

His name is Eridan, Sollux finds out shortly after he’s hired, and that just makes his dislike for the guy bloom bitter in his chest. Really, who the fuck is named anything like Eridan? Ever? So his name is where it begins: Sollux gets it completely wrong on purpose for about a week and he finds that the annoyance that flits across Eridan’s face when he grumbles to correct him is completely and utterly worth it. It transforms his distant expression for a second, brings his thick eyebrows down low, pulls his mouth into a scowl, the picture of arrogance sick of being bothered. By the third day Eridan starts catching on and slipping snide insults back to him, disparaging comments, hissed threats, always under his breath. Sollux is  _humiliatin’ scum_ , he’s  _just askin’ to get fuckin’ throttled_ , he’s _so unbelievably fuckin’ stupid for not bein’ able to grasp such a simple concept as a fuckin’ name_ , and if possible hearing all of it only motivates Sollux even further: Eridan not only isn’t backing down, he’s rearing up instead. He’s a challenge. He’s a game. _  
_

It’s truly hate at first sight.

Over the three remaining weeks that form Eridan’s first month on the job, things only escalate to fever pitch. The two of them are locked in such a perpetual struggle for the last word that everyone else begins to dread working with them both at the same time. Sollux full of sarcasm and Eridan full of poison, they argue ceaselessly, hurling biting words and coarse insults at such a rate and in such rhythm that they seem borderline capable of completing one another’s scathing thoughts. They become so accustomed to their routine dislike that they almost don’t miss a step in their stride when they trip each other, shove each other, knock each other out of the way, tip each other’s coffees or ingredients over. Eridan haughtily takes over more complicated orders as a subtle insult to Sollux’s intelligence; Sollux gives him the wrong ones on purpose to land him in trouble. Eridan slings the filthiest, cruelest barbs he can think of and Sollux parrots them back with a smile in a crude mockery of his silly accent. Regardless of the unexpected fight in the pompous spoiled city boy, Sollux always seems to have the upperhand — makes sure he keeps it, in fact — and screwing Eridan over just never seems to lose its novelty to him.

The thing is, the way Eridan reacts to anger is just so  _different_. Sollux’s own anger is quick, immediate, a crack and burst so abrupt that it’s almost audible, and he thinks that’s a pretty typical response — but not for Eridan. Eridan’s anger builds achingly slow and threatening, like the low far-off warning thunder before a storm hellacious enough to level houses, like the wind languidly whipping ocean water into choppy and dangerous waves in its wake. It purrs and roars and rolls beneath his skin, ever-present, rising and hot, pouring off of him and staining the atmosphere around him with tension and foreboding. He  _becomes_ his anger, embodies it whole and proud, and it’s just so fucking rewarding to piss him off it makes Sollux almost euphoric, the masterpiece of outrage that it paints him. So he just doesn’t stop.

Eridan is already sour and irritated on the day it happens, so mired in his own negative emotional bullshit that he only half-heartedly grumbles at Sollux for the majority of their shift and spends the rest of it positively brooding. He normally goes on at such an endless rate that it’s so dreadfully  _boring_ to have him quiet, it’s not as fun, it just won’t do. Sollux’s usual jabs and jibes don’t do anything to him while he’s in this mood, floating unreachable in whatever downward spiral he’s in, so he just takes it a step further. He “accidentally” rams himself into Eridan while he’s carrying milk, splashing it all over the sleeve of Eridan’s dear designer shirt, and the reaction is almost instantaneous. He can’t help but grin at the look he gets in response: pure, delicious, acidic contempt, all storm clouds forming and that distant rumbling. Eridan glowers and snaps his teeth, face scrunched, eyes murderous, and damn does he look a fucking sight like that. If looks really could kill, Sollux would be dead on the spot. This is  _exactly_ what he was looking for.

“What the hell was that about, huh, you worthless piece a shit,” Eridan spits in snobby indignation, a tone Sollux is all too familiar with. Slamming the milk down on the counter, he holds out his sleeve as though Sollux hasn’t already seen the damage he’s caused, almost as though Sollux should feel bad about it. What a laugh. “Do you know how much this fuckin’ shirt cost, Captor? This one fuckin’ shirt cost more than your entire disgustin’ fuckin’ wardrobe.”

“Oh no, I’m  _soooo_ sorry,” Sollux lisps in faux apology just to see the way Eridan narrows his eyes, clenches his hands into fists, and he’s promptly rewarded with just that. “Why don’t you stop wearing your ever-so-fucking-precious designer clothes to your shitty underpaying job then,  _princess_?”

Eridan actually snarls then, loud, filling up with hatred so strong it pulses through him, pulses  _from_  him, Sollux can feel it like something tangible washing over his skin, and — there, it happens. Eridan’s anger builds to its breaking point all at once, boiling over, the tidal wave crashing down upon the shore, the hurricane winds reaching full fucking force. It’s wild and so incredibly satisfying to see the way it makes his eyes go black, stiffens his entire body with the intensity of it, twists his face with violent, righteous resentment — and something else, something Sollux has never seen that seems to pry at the corners of him just for an instant, seems to fold him inwards, expand and collapse him. It makes him larger than himself, somehow.

Anger burns Eridan white hot and brilliant, and he’s never looked more the picture of the rude, rich boy he fancies himself than he does right now.

Making this inhumane, positively venomous growling sound, Eridan rips off his uniform apron, throwing it to the floor. “ _Fuck_  you, I don’t got to stay here an’ take this shit from absolute dirt fuckin’ _filth_ like you,” he grinds out from behind his gritted teeth, and he shoulder-checks Sollux so hard it very nearly sends him to the floor as he stalks past. He actually visibly fumes all the way out the door, which he slams shut behind him, the snap and clatter forceful enough to shake the windows. The shop is almost perfectly quiet in the wake of his outrage, but the ghost of it still coils through the air like an imprint that Sollux feels he could almost reach out and touch if he were so inclined. Even the silence is ringing with it.

“Shit,” Sollux whispers to himself.

He just  _has_ to make that happen again.

-

Sollux is the last one left in the shop that night and the last one out, locking the door behind him and walking across the parking lot to his car in the dark. He’s unlocking his driver’s side door when he feels Eridan’s presence almost before he hears it, feels the seething warmth at his back. He freezes. How could he not have noticed Eridan’s car tucked snugly away in the corner of the lot? Had he really waited in their goddamn parking lot for a whole half hour just to confront him?

“Have you been fucking  _waiting_ for me?” Sollux asks incredulously, turning around, and that’s a mistake. As soon as he so much as catches a glimpse of Eridan, all squared shoulders and upturned nose, he catches a slap across the face as well. Eridan actually does it, Eridan actually hits him, and he should be crowing with laughter at the fact that it’s a slap and not a proper punch except it’s a firm backhand and Eridan wears like twenty fucking rings, so it actually really fucking stings. It stings so much Sollux’s hand reflexively comes up to his cheek, touching the dull burn, hissing in pain. It’s definitely going to bruise.

“That’s for callin’ me fuckin’ ‘princess’, you disrespectful trash,” Eridan sneers, his voice dark and heated with disgust. He grabs Sollux’s shirt with both ringed hands and pulls him forward until their faces are an inch away from each other and they’re glaring directly into each other’s eyes. “An’ this is for me fuckin’  _likin’ it_.”

Yanking him the rest of the way in, Eridan smashes their mouths together and Sollux barely has an instant to register that it’s happening and that it kind of fucking hurts before he just as quickly registers that wow, okay, it’s also actually kind of fantastic. He can feel the animosity, the hostility, the  _urgency_  in the way Eridan shoves his tongue artlessly into his mouth, growling and huffing, and it’s sloppy and messy and uncomfortable and  _good_ , really fucking good. The kiss is so like his anger, almost an extension of it, the peak of it, fierce and unbridled and all-consuming. So Sollux does the only thing that makes any sense to him, which is twining his fingers tight into Eridan’s latest stupid, superfluous fucking scarf, tugging him in harder and giving just as good as he’s getting.

Eridan snarls against him in response, all hot breath and teeth and his nails digging like claws into Sollux’s chest, and he does this thing that feels like he’s fucking Sollux’s mouth obscenely with his tongue and jesus, it’s disgusting and actually absolutely mindblowing. Sollux has never kissed anyone with such blatant disregard for literally anything that isn’t kissing him until he can’t fucking breathe, and he returns the sentiment twofold, harsh, rough, tasting sea salt and bitter irritation and something faintly metallic. The sound he pulls from Eridan is his little victory in their struggle, a high choked little thing that borders on sweetness, Eridan’s lips flush against his own -- but the moment of brief half-triumph is ruined when Eridan retaliates by sucking Sollux’s tongue further into his mouth and biting,  _hard_. Hard enough that Sollux strangles a yell and uses his grip to shove Eridan back and off of him, looking like he could breathe fire.

“What the actual  _fuck_ was that for,” Sollux demands, and Eridan shrugs, running a shaky hand through his hair almost casually as he turns his head to spit what appears to be Sollux’s blood onto the ground before wiping his mouth with his sleeve. There's no way that should be as hot as it is.

“You’re the most miserable pathetic fuckin’ prick I ever had the misfortune a meetin’ an’ you totally fuckin’ deserved it, that’s what it was for,” Eridan retorts hoarsely, as though the concept is so excruciatingly easy to understand. He sidesteps around an irately sputtering Sollux before he can come up with his own disparaging remark and adds over his shoulder, on his way to his own car: “An’ don’t _ever_ call me that again.”

-

The next day when Sollux arrives to close, Eridan has already departed early from his opening shift, his car even gone from the lot. It’s almost as if he’s avoiding the matter entirely, avoiding Sollux entirely. Almost, but not quite, Sollux thinks as he opens his locker to dump his junk into it and finds a black shirt that doesn’t belong to him already neatly folded inside.

Rolling his eyes, Sollux pulls the shirt out and yeah, sure enough, it’s Eridan’s — totally wrinkle-free with a designer label, and it smells just like his pretentious cologne. That much is unmistakable. There’s a dull stain from the milk on the sleeve, too, and a note stuck to the front written in admittedly gorgeous, overly elongated cursive:

_You’re payin’ to get this dry-cleaned outta your own pitiful paycheck, Captor._

There’s no name signed; there doesn’t need to be. But in the bottom corner, just as elegantly written, there’s a phone number, and Sollux smirks despite himself.

The new hire at work is a complete and utter douchebag, and Sollux really wants the chance to kiss him again.


End file.
